Is 500 hours of break in really nec.?

PS: In regard to the Coincident cables and 500 hours (that's a long time!). I would hope that they sound pretty good at 200 hours or so and that the rest of the time is just fine tuning. I have found many cables to sound "good" at 100 hours or so and then just get a little better afterward. I have also been off work the past year and listen to the systems a lot, so this situation is a lot different from coming home from work each day and just listening for a few hours in the evening (with a television blaring in one of the other rooms and the microwave oven going non-stop:-).

Ditto, Dekay.

Re. "familiarity factor" in break-in. During the first 5 minutes I listened to my NBS Statements, all I could think was: this sound is so gigantic, so "over the top," so steroidal ... I wish I could have this sound ready "as a secret weapon" anytime I want in the future. Of course, as the cable broke in, the sound became more civilized. A good thing, since I would not have wanted to listen to a cable so big gestured as this for very long. And I have never fully been able to recreate the "first 5 minute effect" except by pulling the Statements out of the system and replacing them with something thinner sounding for some time and then putting them back in. --Another cable that is "all over the map soundwise" when breaking in is the Siltech. Try out their big powercord on any component in your system and you will think for the first few hours that someone disconnected your tweaters. --As for the Coincident IC, this cable sounded confused and disorganized out of the box (I mean, the bag). I broke mine in last summer for 336 (14 X 24) hours straight during vacation. I hooked them up to an old CD player and ran a very loud recording over them direct into a preamp 24 hours a day. When I came back back from vacation, the cable still sounded dry and overly tight in the midrange, so much so that listening to vocal recordings on it was unenjoyable. I broke it in for another 168 hours and it relaxed a bit further. I ran some comparisons between it and a few other cables on a Stax headphone unit and decided it was definitely a contender. I then used it as a phono cable for a few months on my TT set up (Simon Yorke w/ Transfiguration Temper Supreme). At first, I was pleased: it was clearly superior than a Fadel Art phono cable I had been using. But after awhile I decided the Coincident's weak spot consistently seemed to be with voices--too dry, not rich enough for my taste--and bass--slight lack of countour and shape. I eventually wrote the person I bought this cable from about these problems and eventually replaced the Coincident with another cable on my TT set-up. In the end, the Coincident IC got switched to my recording studio and performs superbly as an IC cable on projects that do not involve voices.

Sol322, You asked me to report back on my comparison. Before I started this thread, I started a thread called "Coincident or LAT or Madrigal". One of those that responded was Redkiwi, below is a copy of his repsonse and I found it to be exactly as he had stated.

"While I rate the Coincident highly, I find the (Meridian) 508-24 to be a tad laid-back, the JPS to be a tad forwrad, and the Coincident to be a tad laid-back. Hence changing from JPS to Coincident may not take the Meridian in the right direction - but only you can judge that.."

I will leave the JPS connected to my CD player for now and the Coincident to my tuner. Maybe when more break-in is done on the Coincident I can do it again.

The JPS cable is the SC original, not the SC+ or SC2. Both the JPS and Coincident are balanced. They are run through a ML 383.

Cables "wear out" over time probably because your connectors and jacks are getting dirty. Also, the surfaces of the conductors oxidize and the metal loses conductivity over a long period of time. But this takes years, not months.